Reminiscence
by Romann
Summary: Dawn is nearing. Godric and Eric make one last attempt to understand each other. Sequel to Twice Lost.


There were no stars in the Dallas sky, Eric mused, raising his eyes to it for the first time since he had arrived. Maybe it was always like this. He wouldn't know. Ordinarily, nor would he have cared--tonight, however, that muted, darkened blotch of a sky was as irritating as that persistent, non-descript presence behind him, whose voice rose in polite contempt. She was coming so very close to the wrong end of his fangs.

'Eric, we're meeting in--'

'I heard you the first time,' he deadpanned.

After a beat during which he moved not an inch, Isabel stomped out of the room, her grumble that Eric could at least take responsibility for his own mistakes just loud enough to be heard. The infuriating, patronising footsteps approached again and something oddly resembling a headache began to tap at his temples. Eric thought that he must have been spending too much time around humans.

'I heard you the first time,' he repeated, deathly calm but no longer willing to use of courtesy. 'Kindly fuck off.'

'I'm not Isabel,' Godric replied simply, and the sky evaporated from Eric's sight. 'But, whatever your reasons for treating her so rudely, I hope you won't extend them to me.'

Eric didn't reply, didn't turn to look at Godric, didn't even stand from where he sat on the bed. He hadn't thought Godric would seek him out again--he had had no intentions of seeking out _Godric,_ not so soon, perhaps not ever, not--

'Eric?'

'I apol--' Eric began, starting over when his voice didn't obey him as fluidly as it should. 'I apologise. I'll be more careful in the future.'

'Did you manage to retain the information she came here to relay?'

'Nan Flanagan is on the way,' Eric rattled off like a schoolboy, shifting his gaze to his own lap and noting with a certain self-disdain that his hands shook slightly. He flexed his fingers against his thighs to still them and waited, head bent low. It wouldn't be a courtesy call. There was a reason for Isabel's nerves. If Eric cleared his mind, he might even convince himself that it was the same reason for Godric's terseness.

Godric did seem to be taking the visit quite seriously. 'You will need to behave in a certain manner.'

'She's just a second-tier--' Eric snapped, in spite of himself. None of the royals had sent word, or representatives, or otherwise indicated that they found the matter as serious as Nan and her paper-shuffling crew. Why was Godric bowing to these people?

'You will be quiet,' Godric cut him off, just a hint of ice creeping into his voice. 'You will not speak unless you are directly addressed, you will not add data of your own to what I or Isabel will say. Ms Stackhouse will surely have to justify her presence, and you may be required to speak then--but I have already instructed her on what to say. You will add as little to her version as possible. Is this clear?'

'I orchestrated the--' _The rescue_. Eric looked for a different word. _Your rescue_. '--the confrontation. Nan will want to put me on the spot.'

'It was _my_ second-in-command who invaded the church, and that is the reason Ms Flanagan is here. She will be too busy with me to focus on you. You will be quiet, unless you are addressed. You will stay out of the discussion as much as possible. And you will control your temper. Is this clear?'

Eric didn't reply.

'Eric.'

'I'm sorry, Godric,' he mumbled at last, and his voice was too heavy for the subject matter. 'Yes. It's clear,' he added when no reaction came. 'Anything else?'

'Yes,' Godric said, almost as an afterthought. 'Be discreet. And if you can--depending on what room we're in--try to sit away from me.'

There they were. Eric didn't know why he suddenly felt so inarticulate or why, when he found his voice again, it came out in an incomprehensible jumble of Old Norse and Swedish.

'Should I skip the meeting altogether?'

'I'd prefer it if you did,' Godric replied, in perfectly straightforward English, 'but what I want is irrelevant. She'll want you there and, like all of us, you'll be watched from all corners. Which is why you must control your temper. I will not be disobeyed in this.'

_In this._

The sleep that had eluded Eric throughout the long, long day began to cloak him. He was too tired to try to figure out if there were deeper meanings to Godric's words. Too defeated, perhaps that was the word. His thighs were starting to smart from his hands' grip, and his back from the strain of Godric's gaze and cold voice so near him. He was tired. He didn't think he had much of a temper left to control.

'Yes, Godric.'

In a less sedate state, he might have guessed at the exact degree at which Godric's head tilted in reply. There would be a tiny knitting of the brow. Unless Godric had changed habits since the last time they had met...

'Eric?' Godric's voice brought him out of his nonsensical musings, and there was a different note in it. Something less stern, and yet not quite lighter that Eric couldn't place. The pressure at his temples didn't feel imaginary.

'When will you leave?'

The odd note was distress.

And never until those words had Eric known shame.

'Immediately, if you wish,' he managed to whisper over the sound of his own mind in upheaval.

_You shouldn't have come. _Godric's earlier words echoed between them. Eric couldn't change that now. He would happily have done so if it returned them to what they had been, but he couldn't. He couldn't change what he had done, couldn't even understand it. He wanted to crumble. _Forgive me._

_Stop me._

_Forgive me._

Eric was so unused to guessing at Godric's intentions. He studied the silence that followed his words as though it might provide him with a clue as to what his maker made of them. If he was considering the possibility, if he somehow thought banishing Eric from his nest - for Eric hardly thought he might return - was not enough, if... anything. This sphinx passing for his maker could have been thinking anything and Eric wouldn't know. He couldn't feel it, as he hadn't felt him walk into the room. It was as though their millennium-old bond was no longer there. Was it his fault? Had he severed it?

Had Godric?

'It's too late,' Godric's own murmur shattered the silence with the force of a bellow, as grim as Eric's thoughts. 'I--Eric. Look at me.'

_The bond_, Eric thought, in mounting anxiety. _What had happened to their bond?_ It couldn't be, there had to be something he could do, Godric had to let him try to redeem himself somehow. He had been loyal, blindly loyal for a thousand years. One moment of madness couldn't have eclipsed it all. Godric, too, had been mad once...

'It's very difficult to conduct a conversation with your back. Look at me,' Godric requested, his voice so drained that Eric had to obey.

'Godric, please--' The words saw themselves out of his lips of their own accord just as he spotted, beyond the open door, the passers-by pausing to peer into the room, ignorant of the situation but eager to see the Viking being cut down to size.

He had been ready to beg. Yet, at the sight of Godric's nest mates, all the meek pleas that lay on his tongue retreated down his throat in abject shame. He couldn't. Even Godric's regretful look--_he couldn't,_ he couldn't grovel in front of them.

The part of him that still remembered his maker as he had been wondered why Godric hadn't forced him to do precisely that, knowing as he did that few things would break Eric further.

Godric looked uncomfortable, anxious--he studied Eric with a wariness that had never been there before, yet when Eric tried to return the intensity, he sobered up and looked away, shutting his child out of his thoughts without the need to move another muscle.

Losing their bond would break Eric further than public humiliation.

He cleared his throat, readying to try again. _Forgive me. Punish me. Do something_. Those people. Those leeches poised just feet from Godric.

'I f--' _I failed you_. Those leeches with their sneers in position.

As he struggled with his ever-diminishing vocabulary, Godric followed his gaze and cast a stern glance at the underlings. They scurried remarkably quickly.

Eric felt pathetically grateful. Godric had never glanced at him that way. He was grasping at straws, now. Broken, rotten straws, even--the glance Godric had cast him, only hours ago, was worse than any he would ever cast his nest mates. Eric was in doubt over whether he was losing his mind entirely or just being granted it back. Either way, it was easier to think without an audience.

'My only wish was for this to end without heartbreak,' Godric said softly. 'Since that wasn't possible, let me end it without further bloodshed. Stay and behave. It will be over soon.'

Before Eric could try to wrangle meaning from those words, the doorknob clicked between Godric's fingers and he turned away, adding, 'We'll be downstairs. Don't be long.'

'Godric, I need--' Eric let out, somehow finding his usual voice. But then he didn't know what to say, which set of words to grind out of the cacophony of his thoughts. He didn't understand the situation he was in, didn't know where to turn to next. Mostly, he didn't want Godric to leave, to shut himself away in the cloud of underlings that Eric didn't know. He could fix it if Godric stayed--he could try. He could find the right words, and actually say them. Or he could listen. He could kneel, he could beg, drag himself across the floor clutching silver. Publicly, if that--Godric was moving, tilting his head in an unfamiliar manner to eye him inquisitively.

'Yes?'

Each word that came to Eric's mind was more shameful than the next. Once or twice, he thought he had found the right beginning, and then it unravelled into undignified babble before Godric's unmoving gaze. An odd stinging feeling seeped into him from somewhere and he pursed his lips against it, frowning emptily and hating himself for feeling so helpless, so inadequate, so unworthy. He had never felt this way. He loathed it. It was at least fortunate that he had never had the remotest propensity for tears.

'If you are inclined to think of me after this, know that I was loyal,' was all he managed in the end. 'I _am_ loyal. I never meant--if ever I was--whatever madness--' And then he was lost again.

The hinges on the lock clicked haltingly, but Godric had not crossed the threshold. He was closing the door. It slid shut, the metallic sound echoing in the charged air and making Eric feel like he was functioning at a higher speed than his surroundings.

For all the urgency of the situation, Godric moved with the slow, measured pace of a very old man and it was maddening for, oddly enough, he had never reminded Eric more of a boy. He drowned in the neatly buttoned-up shirt that was far, far too large for him. Eric found himself wondering which unobservant underling had given him it--lent it to him until Godric could access his own clothing, or whatever was left of it, perhaps? Absurdly, the matter of whose it was slithered into his mind until he could think of nothing else.

Once, Godric would have borrowed something of Eric's, and then he would have refused to give it back, knowing how irritable Eric was about his belongings. He had not had many as a young vampire, so he treasured the ones he had. Godric would have picked one of Eric's favourites, however ill fitting, and paraded it in front of his eyes until he grew tired of the joke. Eric had lost much of his clothing thus. In a different time. The knowledge that he had lost something as insignificant as the right to lend Godric a clean shirt was almost more painful than all else that he had managed to lose in one demented move. It brought him back to the present moment, and to Godric drowning in that silly shirt that Eric couldn't trace back to any of his nest mates.

'I would have given my life, should you have needed it.'

And with that final blow to his dignity, he had to turn away. All that he had wanted to say suddenly came to him much more clearly, but the time for that had passed.

The seconds dripped by as Eric stared out the window at the unfamiliar, unwelcoming, maddeningly uninteresting skyline. When Godric spoke again, he had to stop himself from jumping at the closeness of the voice.

'Have I made it seem as though I don't know that?'

Eric didn't reply.

'Is that why you have been so angry with me?

Eric clamped his mouth shut against the bitterness that wanted to erupt. Godric looked so neat in his overlarge shirt. Suddenly, he was very aware of his own uncombed hair, pasty against his forehead, and of his clothes clinging against his skin because he had not bothered to towel himself dry. He wondered if Godric had sat under the shower for as long as he had.

'I'm not angry.'

'Upset, then,' Godric rephrased as though it were only a matter of semantics, reaching for Eric's uncharacteristically messy hair. Eric recoiled from the lightly curled fingers as if they dripped silver. They lingered in front of his eyes for a moment and then withdrew.

The silence that followed while Eric turned his attention to the window was short, yet certainly, the longest in Eric's many years.

'Will you allow me to sit with you?' Godric asked curtly.

Not trusting his tongue to say anything other than nonsense, Eric jerked the discarded towel from where it lay beside him without looking away from whatever lay beyond the glass. Godric didn't remark on the blood on the otherwise dry fabric, and he didn't explain.

But he also chose to sit on the floor.

'You shouldn't have come,' he eventually said grimly, and Eric would have preferred the uncomfortable silence.

'You had been captured.'

'I wasn't mistreated.'

'_That didn't occur to me.'_

The silence was definitely preferable.

'I didn't mean to give you so much cause for concern.'

'Then don't let yourself be captured again,' Eric exploded, immediately clamping his hands over his face. 'Forgive me.'

'Eric,' Godric said when he neither spoke nor moved again.

'Forgive me.'

'Eric.'

'_Forgive me._'

'Eric.'

'_Please...'_

'What would you have me forgive?' Godric cut in, pushing Eric's hands away from his face and squeezing his chin into the space above Eric's lap so that Eric wouldn't elude him by looking down. 'The action or the intention? There is no use in forgiving the one without the other. _Which one are you sorrier for_?'

There were apparently new depths of shame to explore tonight. Eric shook his head, unable to reply, and Godric let go of his hands.

'Shall I ask for forgiveness as well?' Godric vented uncharacteristically, repositioning himself on the floor, looking in the same direction as Eric. 'We can be here all night.'

'What is there to forgive?' Eric mumbled.

Godric cast him a look that transparently said Eric simply didn't get the point, and quieted down.

'Is it always like this?' Eric eventually asked, merely to break the silence.

'Like what?' Godric sounded weary, too weary to go on, and Eric's guilt reached a new level.

'Starless.'

'What?'

'The sky. There are no stars in the sky. You used to like them.'

'I did...' Godric agreed, sounding as though he had needed the reminder. 'You didn't.'

'I learned.'

'Ah.'

'You couldn't be anywhere cloudy for long. Didn't want to visit Pam and me in London...' Eric recalled.

'I didn't want to spend time with a screeching harpy, is all.'

'She was only like that for a few months.'

'Is she a good child to you?'

'Yes,' Eric replied instantly, and that was the only word so far that came naturally to him.

'Are you a good maker?'

A little corner of Eric's mind wanted to say '_the best'_, but it wasn't one of those conversations. 'She's always come back.'

'Have you released her, then?'

'Years ago.'

'Should I have released you?'

Eric's voice was again strangely reduced to a shadow of its usual self. 'Released?'

'No?'

'_No.'_

'I just wondered...'

The air was heavy again, and Eric felt that he had been led into a conversation he decidedly didn't want to have.

'I don't understand you.'

'I don't understand myself, sometimes,' Godric admitted. 'I'm very old. An eccentric old sheriff of little consequence... Eric,' he added, switching to a heartier tone. 'I have a request.'

'Yes?'

'Feed from me.'

There were no words for what those words made Eric feel. '_What_?'

'Feed from me.'

It took him three attempts to bring his lips together firmly enough for a 'No.'

'Why not?' Godric asked, and he sounded so genuinely disappointed that Eric wished he were deaf.

'No,' was all he could say, again.

'You have done it before,' Godric reasoned.

'I can't.'

'I could command you.'

Now that the request had been made, Eric found it very difficult to focus on anything but the blood lulling quietly in Godric's veins. Sadly for his senses, the blood was shielded behind pale, pale skin, sallow skin, thin papery skin that would fall apart with a feathery touch, and he _couldn't_.

'You're weak,' he tried to reason.

'I'm stronger than you.' Godric's lips were blue and his eyes were watery. _So round, and light, and empty..._

'You're _weak_. You're starved. You've been surrounded by silver for days, you've just survived a shrapnel cocktail and then I―' Eric cleared his throat. 'I can't. Don't make me. Don't command me. Not this.'

'Please.'

Eric's own blood seemed to be curdling in his veins. Godric never asked him for anything, never craved anything he could not have. Eric had been the continually curious, ambitious, eager one. Godric had never had to ask him "please."

'Why would you ask this of me?' He could feel his resolve weakening with every word, and Godric could surely feel the same, because he was not _deaf_. Why would Godric do that, take that chance? His fangs were itching to descend, confused as to why there was blood nearby that they could not access. He could see them both already, sprawled about in a macabre re-enactment of last night. This would not end well. 'Do you want to be drained?'

'You won't drain me.' Behind Godric's voice, his blood sang sweetly for Eric and, for a split second, he considered trusting his maker's word as he always had. Godric's skin looked stronger and healthier as his self-control splintered...

'I can't. I'm sorry.'

Godric looked down, and they were quiet. Eric wished he had talked about Pam a bit longer, or the stars, or whatever other safe topic there was. Godric was disappointed. It was the one request Godric had of him, and he had refused. On a more pedestrian note, his blood was staging a mutiny in his veins.

'Eric...'.

_Oh, no_

'Please.

_No, no, no._

'I would like to feel what you feel. Let me see through your eyes. Please.'

'You'll have to command me.'

'I don't want to command you. I am telling you why I want this. I am telling you that I trust you. That I need your help.'

'Punishment,' Eric breathed out.

'That it will make me happy. Please, my child. I am asking you to help me.'

And how could Eric possibly have thought his resolve would be stronger than his maker's?

'If I feed from you,' he clipped out as though in pain. 'You will feed from me. Immediately afterwards.'

'Eric, there's no need―'

'You will _feed_―enough to keep you standing―or I shall only take your blood if you command me.'

It was a very short silence that Godric broke as he rolled up one sleeve, then the other, and then looked apologetically at Eric. 'I don't know which―'

'Whichever is easier,' Eric grumbled, closing his eyes against whatever was pulling at his temples.

Godric repositioned himself against the bed to look him in the eye. 'I know you don't believe me. I know you think I'm delirious. But you _are_―you are giving me the only thing I want. The one thing I need. I do need it. I want to see through your eyes. Let me be _you_ for a moment. I'm asking for a gift. I am not punishing you.'

Eric felt utterly manipulated, completely out of his depth, but there was nothing to do but open his eyes and face his maker's. They shone so brightly at the prospect.

'May I?' he murmured at last.

Godric nodded.

Letting himself fall, rather than lowering himself, to the floor, Eric reached for the top-most button of Godric's shirt and undid it, pushing as little of the fabric apart as he could as he brought his mouth to the skin. He couldn't help but mutter a tiny, 'I'm sorry,' childishly ashamed of the speed at which his fangs had flicked down.

A moment later, he had forgotten his reservations―had forgotten that there _had_ been any reservations to this feeling. Godric's blood, Godric's skin, Godric's all shifting to accommodate him, making not a complaint when his fangs sank in more deeply, when Eric's hands unclenched to reach for him, to encase him. Godric's blood so warm, so perfect in his mouth, so beyond anything he had ever tasted. Godric's hand so gentle against his cheek, cradling him, supporting him, Godric's tiny breath leaving his lips when Eric held his neck more tightly and bit again...

_Godric's tiny breath._

Eric pulled away so sharply he hit the stupid nightstand right behind him, but he barely felt it, for his hand was still on Godric's collar, and he cared about nothing apart from the wounds he had left there, and whether they were healing at all. When he saw that they were, slowly but surely, closing, he allowed himself a breath of his own, and his head sagged against the bed, much like Godric's.

'Feed,' he eventually forced out.

'Thank you,' Godric whispered, giving him an oddly doe-eyed look as he repositioned his collar. It was so weak, Godric's whisper.

'_Feed._'

'Where―'

'_Now_.'

Godric stretched, sighed and looked him up and down with a bit of a pout, as though this were an immensely inconvenient detail. Eric having glared him into movement, he placed one hand on the bed and one on the floor beside Eric and aimed for the neck. Before he reached it, he pulled back to look at Eric.

'You will not hate me if I experiment?'

Eric had been ready to push himself full force against Godric's fangs upon feeling him retreat, but Godric's eyes shone and the sheepish smile on his lips was so much like the one he used to sport that Eric would have allowed him anything.

Godric pursed his lips and furrowed his brow as if he were going to attempt the most complex bite in History, and Eric was enthralled by this glimpse of the Godric he had known. Then, before he could entirely grasp what had happened first, Godric held his face with both hands, his head hit the nightstand, Godric's torso hit his and Godric's fangs hit his mouth. After that, it was very hard to think, although he was vaguely aware of a sting in his tongue. When he blinked again, Godric was sitting neatly against the bed, checking his lips for blood and looking very seriously at Eric.

'You barely took anything,' Eric rasped out, just because he had to say _something_.

'I took enough,' Godric countered, turning to the window.

Eric gathered his wits and mimicked his maker's position, still adapting to the unusual feeling of blood twice as powerful as his own inside his body.

Godric broke the silence. 'This was very foolish of me. I should have gone for the neck.'

'And I shouldn't have half drained you,' Eric remarked simply, shrugging as though his shoulders had a mind of their own.

'Eric,' Godric said, and he sounded gravely. Eric's body quieted down accordingly. 'I'm serious. I'm―sorry. I thought... perhaps...' He closed his eyes and started again. 'I was a selfish maker, I realise that. In many ways,' he added more vehemently when Eric frowned at him. 'Very... vain. Very unappreciative, sometimes. Of you and everyone. That _is_ who I am. But I don't care about the others. Let me speak―I know that you always were loyal, despite so much of what I did to you―with you―_let me speak―_In short... I know, from what I see, I was a poor maker―a poor companion―'

Eric stared at him as though he had gone mad. 'Is that my blood speaking?'

'This is a very old man admitting he was a poor maker to a child that―somehow―still cares for him. I won't, _cannot_ say I will be better, or that I would be better if I could go back. I couldn't have been better. What I mean is--if I failed you--if there was something you expected from me and I didn't give you, if I... toyed... I did the best I could. The best I knew how.'

'I never reproached you anything―' Eric began, entirely unsure of what to say to that incomprehensible barrage. 'What―what is this?'

Godric sighed, closing his eyes. 'The ramblings of an old fool with a Viking's blood in his veins. Thank you for having mine, Eric. You don't know how thankful I am.'

Eric nodded quietly.

'It's a lovely night,' Godric commented after a moment. 'May I enjoy it with you a minute longer before we leave?'

Eric nodded again, slightly calmer now that Godric had stopped talking nonsense.

'Do you ever do this with Pam?'

'No. She's not as good a storyteller as you.' She would also sooner meet the sun than stare at the sky all night. Eric had been like her, once. Even in that, she made him proud.

'You used to hate my "philosophising", as I recall...' Godric said lazily.

'I grew old. There isn't much to do at my age _but_ philosophise.'

Godric smiled, and Eric with him.

'I think I ran out of stories to tell, my child.'

'I have one,' Eric found himself saying.

Godric looked curiously at him. 'One of mine?'

'No.'

'Do I know it?'

'Perhaps. It's from our younger days.'

'May I hear it?'

'I'm not a good storyteller.'

'But I'm a good listener.'

Eric shut his eyes. 'There was once a man. A brave man, a warrior. There wasn't anything particularly interesting about him other than that. One day he was wounded―in battle―seriously wounded. As he lay dying, a boy came along, young and strong, and healthy, and all that the warrior no longer was. He hated the boy then. He was in such pain. And he wanted to live... so much. The boy had powers and he healed the warrior. And he took him to see the world.'

'Like a fairy godmother?' Godric chipped in.

Eric ignored him. 'And he taught him―taught the warrior―many things, so many that, at one point, the warrior realised he had known nothing before. And slowly, over time, the boy became everything to him. And he tried to show his gratitude, his affection, his... everything... whenever he could, but he had never known how, had never needed to show any of that. But what he did seemed to be enough. And one day, after many, many years--'

'Had the boy grown into a man, by then?'

'They had very long lives,' Eric conceded impatiently, and Godric quieted down. 'One day, a tumultuous day, he became angry at the boy. The boy wasn't behaving as he usually did, and the warrior couldn't understand why―and he was very single-minded sometimes, so he was mad. And he hurt the boy. He hurt him terribly, because the boy trusted him, and he hurt himself because the boy was all that he had, but he hurt him nonetheless, and he kept hurting him until―and then the boy... somehow... sought him out. And... Forgave him. The man was so grateful. So full of joy.' Eric coughed. 'Like I said, I'm not good at this.'

'Did the warrior forgive himself?'

'No.' Eric cleared his throat and opened his eyes. 'But he hoped he might.'

Godric stretched and looked at him. 'Yes, I know that tale. I learned it differently. The way I was told it, the boy was lonely, and sad―it's a terrible feeling, loneliness―and the man kept him company, listened to him when no-one would, and saw things in him that no-one had. The boy learned very much from the man. But he was just a boy―and he was stupid. He never thought to say thank you―maybe he didn't know how. And when, one day, the warrior was hurt by this, he didn't understand why. And the warrior never knew that he had saved the boy, repeatedly, since the first day they had met. It was a very silly boy.

Godric's gaze shifted from Eric to the window, the tiniest of smiles dancing on his lips. Eric's own gaze lingered on Godric, as it had so many times before.

'I can see them, Eric. The stars. It had been so long.'

________

THE END


End file.
